Horror Hosts

I've been meaning to check out this book. The whole multi-media phenomenon of horror hosts is interesting to me. Those horror-themed employers of terrible puns, making fun of (or perhaps having fun with) whatever B-movie or vintage horror film their program was showing that week. They likely reached their greatest exposure in hosting B-movies in late night or Saturday afternoons or various local (or later cable) TV stations, and even more recently on the internet. The internet tells me the first of these was Vampira in Los Angeles from 1954-55, but the first I encountered was Zacherley (on a cheap VHS tape). Well, perhaps the first I saw was Commander USA, but he doesn't really fit the standard mold.

At least one of these TV horror hosts, Elvira, made it into comics, but comics had its own horror host history, predating Vampira. The Black Witch (MLJ) first appeared in 1942 and the Man in Black (Harvey) in 1945. Probably the most iconic of comics' horror hosts are the three "GhouLunatics" from EC Comics. starting with the Crypt-Keeper in 1950, who ultimately broke out into TV and film.

The horror host tradition was perhaps suppressed by the arrival of the comics code but came roaring back in the Bronze Age. DC's Cain, Abel, and the Three Witches are only the most famous of their many hosts. I believe Marvel only had one hosted horror title, Tower of Shadows, but it had two hosts: Digger and Gravely P. Headstone. Warren Magazine's Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie hosts of the books bearing their name got an earlier start (1964 and 1966, respectively) thanks to not being bound by the code.

So where did the horror host get started? Radio. The witch Old Nancy hosted The Witch's Tale (1931-1938). Probably a big influence on their groaner, ghoulish pun style was Raymond, host of the popular Inner Sanctum Mysteries from 1941-1952.

De Camp's Pusadian Cycle

 

Lately, I've been furthering my exploration of L. Sprague de Camp's fantasy work, with the Novarian novels, but I've also dipped into some of his earlier Pusadian series. It has sort of a similar relationship to the Howard's Hyborian Age stories that de Camp's Krishna novels have to Burroughsian Sword & Planet. That is, it's an attempt to do the same thing more "realistically" or at least in a concerted and methodological sort of way. For instance, de Camp uses current (to the 1950s) understanding of geologic change to inform his design of his landforms, and more rigorously derives his imagined countries and their names from Greek myth (mostly).

Whether any of that is necessary, every reader will have to decide for themselves, but I appreciate the thought behind it, at least. I also appreciate the less "standard fantasy" sort of setting. It's mostly a Bronze Age level of technology, with iron being the bane of magic.

I discovered that a number of the older Pusadian stories published in the pulps are available on the Internet Archive:

"The Eye of Tandyla" (1951)

"The Owl and the Ape" (1951)

"The Stronger Spell" (1953)

"The Hungry Hercynian" (1953)

"Ka the Appalling" (1958)

Character Design References in Batman: The Caped Crusader Season 2

Batman: The Caped Crusader, the Prime Video animated series, contains a number of plot elements, and characters drawn from the long history of Batman comics, and also a number of homages or references to films. One of these that drew my attention were the classic film references in the designs of the characters. 

Here are ones I noted or was able to find reference to on the internet:

Eddie "Ridder" Nygma reminded a lot of people, including myself, of the sort of criminal tough guys played by James Cagney, but he really most resembles Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death (1947).

Mr. Zero (the original name for Mr. Freeze) resembles Peter Lorre's character in Mad Love (1935).

The Joker is a clear homage to Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs (1928).

Rita's flying suit resembles the outfit of Commado Cody from Radar Men from the Moon (1952).

Thorn, the alter ego of Rose Canton, evokes the femme fatale performances of Rita Hayworth.

The Return of the Marvel Masterworks

 

Marvel cancelled the Marvel Masterworks line of reprints with Defenders vol. 10 in 2025 due to declining sales. The line had always had a fitful history, though. In ran from 1987-1993, then went dormant. It was revived in 1997 with pop art style covers by designed by Comicraft, but this version ended in 2002. In 2003, a new trade dress was arrived at (differentiating Atlas era, Golden Age, and regular Marvel) and this version carried through until the end.

Well, Clover Press who I know from their American Comic Strip Library collections have picked up the line, and they are relaunching with a crowdfunding campaign going on now.

These volumes will complete Tomb of Dracula, continue the Simonson run on Thor and the Claremont run on X-men, and start a Super-Villain Team-Up series. In addition to bringing back the two previous cover variants, they are adding a cool Clover Press cover.

Next Level Doom Patrol and Legion

 Last week, I checked out 2 books from DC's "Next Level" initiative (Next Level apparently being where you go once you are All In. I wonder where DC will go next with these marketing phrases?). Both were ok, but I definitely liked one better than the other.

Doom Patrol by writer Darcy Van Poelgeest and artist Niko Henrichon has Vertigo vibes, not in the sense of the specific Doom Patrol iteration that was a Vertigo founder, but more just the feel of Vertigo titles. Honestly, it feels feels even more like the Doom Patrol TV series with its grounded, sort of sadsack weirdos Doom Patrol, the character designs, and the characterization of Negative Man, though it doesn't really borrow any specific character bits or plot elements from that series (so far). The Doom Patrol is broke and have started a low-rent heroes-for-hire business to stay busy and pay bills. A job to find a missing cat immediately gets weird, because of course it would.

I thought this was ok. It was well done, but it felt like things I had seen before in a way that keeps me from being enthusiastic about it.

In Legion of Super-Heroes, Joshua Williamson and Hayden Sherman do a bit more re-imagining. The basic character origins are the same, but the 30th Century is now a time that has outlawed superheroes and Superboy is sort of an underground figure, looked up to by young outsiders who might run afoul of the Persuaders, law enforcement that gets people re-educated. The story starts with RJ Brande having been murdered, and Brainiac 1 of 5 and Tenzil Kem are investigating his murder and what it has to do with super-powered individuals. The new designs are modern but remind me a lot of latter era Moebius and a bit of 80s comic sci-fi (like Garcia-Lopez's designs in Twilight and Star Raiders). Think oversized jackets with stuff on them and knee pads. 

This is definitely the more intriguing premise of the two issues for me. It already seems better than the last Legion reboot.

Mignola's Lands Unknown

I confess that while long being a Hellboy fan, I sort of lost interest in the series with its innumerable spinoffs sometime in the 2010s. Since then, I haven't been paying a lot of attention, so if I saw Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown when it came out, I mischaracterized it as yet another of those Hellboy things and didn't pay much attention.

Well, as I recently found out, I was wrong. Bowling with Corpses is, in fact, the start of a whole new shared universe: the Lands Unknown. So, far Mignola has been primary creator on two of graphic novels: the aforementioned title and Uri Tupka and the Gods with a sequel to that one, Uri Tupka and the Devils coming in November. Ben Stenbeck has contributed the two-issue series, Lands Unknown: The Skinless Man. I've read all of these available now, but I'm going to focus the rest of my discussion here on Mignola's two graphic novels, as they are the most unified in scope and tone (though that's no slight on The Skinless Man).

Found this on Reddit where someone had put the locations mentioned on the map

The Lands Unknown is a fantasy world with a feel in some respects similar to Dunsany's imagined East or Lovecraft's Dreamlands, but less Orientalist and more Middle and Eastern Europe and West Asian than those.  It's a polytheistic world where the gods have (perhaps) left, but the Devil is still around. The stories are inspired by folktales and legends from a number of lands. In the anthology, Bowling with Corpses, one of the tales seems pretty clearly derived from a tale in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. This serves to enhance the folkloric effect that Mignola and crew seem to be going for.

Uri Tupka and the Gods is about a theologian, branded a heretic, who sets out to find the gods. Along the way, he encounters strange and deadly things, including the interference of the Devil. The best I can describe it in high concept is sort of Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath meets Viy.

I liked both of these quite a bit. It's good to see Mignola back doing art again. I'm looking forward to next installment of Uri Tupka's travels.

The Crisis Companion

 

Recently, TwoMorrows released The Crisis Companion by Kevin Miller. This is an in-depth look at Crisis on Infinite Earths, its antecedents, its concept, how it plays out issue by issue, and its legacy. Given my ongoing reread of the period of Crisis's publication on my other blog, I was very interested in getting this as soon as I could.

I haven't had a chance to read it in depth yet, but overall, I'd say it looks quite good. At 250 pages there is a lot of detail, and just from browsing it, I've already learned interesting details like how the decision to kill Supergirl was made.

I enjoyed Miller's speculation on how elements of the Crisis story may be metatextual commentary on Wolfman's feelings about writing it. This sort of literary theorizing I liked a lot. I was less pleased with his swipe at the "overly long" "Trial of the Flash" arc wherein he suggests it is the cause "in no small part" of Flash's decline in sales since its inception in 1959. I share his opinion that "Trial" is overly long, but Miller provides absolutely no evidence that sales of Flash declined more precipitously in the years between April of 1983 and June of 1985.  A cursory search online suggests that in fact its sales declined by a greater amount between 1980 and 1982 than 1983 to 1984.  Regardless, absent evidence I'm forced to conclude that either Miller was making a joke that just appears as a statement of fact or he's just being slack about providing the evidence for his claims.

This issue aside and even with a limited read, I think it's a fascinating work and worth adding to your collection if you are a DC or 80s comics history fan.